Some things are cliches for a reason
by charis-kalos
Summary: When John refuses to allow Sammy to play soccer, Sammy storms out. But in this little town that's not a safe thing to do. Sammy and Dean discover that some things are cliches for a reason.
1. Dean's heart was breaking

_**Disclaimer: **I don't own Sam, Dean or anything Supernatural. Which is probably a good thing, because I'd get all maternal and keep them safely tucked up far away from evil, which would make for boring television. Also, the little town the Winchesters are visiting and all its inhabitants belong to the great god Joss Whedom. Only sue me if you want a collection of Australian law books, which are pretty much the only things of value I have._

_**Author's Note: **I come from a land down under; forgive me for the Australian spelling and expressions._

Dean's heart was breaking.

He'd always though that was just a cliché, something that any and all of his many, many English teachers would attack with their evil red pens if he dared to write it, but as he sat in the corner of the motel room, listening to his father and his little brother yell at each other, he was having trouble breathing through the pain in his chest.

The trouble was that his Dad and Sammy were so damn alike. Stubborn. Certain that they were right. Unable to see anyone else's point of view. Definitely unable to see each other's point of view.

It was over soccer, of all stupid things. Sammy wanted to join a soccer team. But practice and games would take up time, time that John wanted Sammy to put into weapons training.

John thought his younger son was being deliberately immature.

Sam thought that his father didn't love him.

Dean was different. Dean knew exactly where both of them were coming from. Dean knew that Sam just wanted to be normal, to do something that every other kid his age took for granted. He wasn't being immature; he was being a thirteen-year-old. Which was, surprise, surprise, exactly what he was.

And Dean knew that John did love Sammy, like he loved Dean, and that everything John did came from that love.

But then, Dean remembered before. He remembered a Dad who would a toss a football with him for hours. A Dad who taught him to catch a baseball. A Dad who would take him camping, back in the days before they knew what lurked in the woods, and sit in the dark with Dean on his lap, as they both watched the fire burn, until Dean fell asleep, waking up the next morning snug in his sleeping bag with no memory of how he got there. And Dean knew that that was the sort of Dad John Winchester had hoped to be for Sam.

Dean didn't have too many memories of the time before, but one of them was of the day Sammy was born.

…

_Dean had woken up in a house that was strangely quiet. Usually his mornings had a soundtrack: Dad singing in the shower; Mom listening to the radio as she fixed breakfast; the two of them laughing together. This morning, though, the house was silent._

_Starting to worry, Dean came downstairs to find Mrs Whedon from next door sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. As Dean entered she stood up._

"_Hey there, Dean. You hungry? Would you like me to fix you breakfast?"_

_Dean was normally starving when he woke, but at the moment he was too worried about his missing parents._

"_Where's Mommy?"_

"_That baby's finally decided to arrive. Your Dad took your Mom to the hospital last night." Mrs Whedon smiled down at him. "You'll have a little brother or sister soon."_

_The baby! Dean seemed to have been waiting for this baby to arrive forever! He wasn't sure how he felt about it. It had been pretty cool feeling it move inside his Mom, but it had made his active Mommy tired and slow. She had spent lots of the last few weeks resting and Dean had missed playing with her. He blamed the baby. And he wasn't sure that the baby's arrival would make things better. He was used to being the only kid; knew that he was the centre of his parents' world. Would things change when there was someone else around? Would Mommy and Dad still have time for him? _

_Dean didn't have any more time to think about the baby and the changes it might create before his Dad burst in through the kitchen door. Dean had never seen his Dad like this before. John Winchester looked so happy that Dean could have sworn his face was glowing. He swooped down on Dean, picked him up, and swung him round and round until Dean was breathless and giddy. Then he held Dean tightly in his arms and told Dean that he had a little brother._

_Dean didn't remember the trip to the hospital. He did remember his first sight of his mother, sitting up in a hospital bed, holding out her arms and smiling at him. And he remembered his first sight of his brother, the white-wrapped bundle his father had picked up from the crib in the corner of the room._

_John was still looking like he'd won the lottery. He was smiling down at that bundle as though it was the most wonderful thing in the world, and as Dean watched, he lifted the bundle to his eye-level and kissed it. "Hello, again, son."_

_For a moment Dean felt jealous of the bundle. He was Daddy's son. Why did Daddy and Mommy need another one? Wasn't he enough? Then Daddy held the bundle out to him and asked him if he'd like to hold his brother. And with Dean sitting on the bed, his legs stuck straight out before him, his mother behind him with her hands on his shoulders to keep him stable, John put Sammy into his arms for the very first time._

_Sammy didn't look like a newborn baby. Not that Dean had seen many of them, but he had expected something red and crumpled, with eyes squeezed closed. Sammy's eyes were wide open, and they gazed into Dean's as though Sammy was reading his mind._

_At that moment Dean fell in love with his little brother, a love that nothing on earth or in hell could tarnish._

"_So, you're a big brother now, Dean," John said, smiling down at his elder son. "How does it feel?"_

_And that's when Dean realised that he was a whole new person. Sammy had made him a new person. He was a big brother, and he couldn't imagine anything better to be._

…

_Exactly six months later, John Winchester had put Sammy into Dean's arms again, and Dean had carried his little brother out of the fire. At that moment he had become Sammy's sworn protector, willing to give his life to keep his little brother safe. But the fire only really confirmed what Dean had known from the day Sammy was born. His little brother was the centre of his universe._

_After the fire, John didn't glow when he looked at Sammy. But whenever Dean looked at Sammy he felt that glow inside him. Sammy was Dean's light._

…

Through the next thirteen years Dean had held onto the images of the day Sammy was born. His father's joy at Sammy's birth. His mother's arms around him and her hands on his shoulders. And Sammy's eyes, gazing into his.

And now the man who had practically _shone_ at Sammy's birth and that baby were yelling at each other in a cheap motel room, while Dean sat watching and felt his heart break.

Finally, Sammy turned and stormed out. Dean watched his father sit down heavily on the closest bed, his eyes closed, as though the argument with his youngest had tired him out more than a hunting trip. For a long moment there was silence. Sammy's final words were ringing in Dean's ears, over and over and over again.

"I hate this screwed-up family!"

Dean didn't think he'd ever get rid of the sound. Screwed-up _family_. Sammy was mad at him as well as their Dad. He was rejecting Dean as well as John.

Finally, John Winchester opened his eyes and looked over at Dean.

"Go after him."

"Look," Dean tried, "I think Sammy just needs some time alone. He'll walk it out and calm down." Dean didn't want to follow his little brother too soon and risk another rejection.

"No. He needs to get back here now. It's getting dark; you know this town isn't safe."

That was true. The whole reason they were in this tiny So-Cal town was that it seemed to be some sort of weird centre of supernatural activity. Pastor Jim had put John Winchester on to it when John had been looking for somewhere that he could settle down for a while, let Dean and Sammy spend some time in the same school, and still go hunting. This small, one-Starbucks town had provided John with enough evil sons of bitches that needed hunting to keep him satisfied, while allowing Dean and Sam to spend more than a few weeks in the one place.

All of which meant that Sammy definitely should not be wandering the streets alone after dark, no matter how angry he was. So Dean snagged his jacket, grabbed Sam's, stuck his sixteenth-birthday-present-gun into the waistband of his jeans, and followed his brother out into the night.


	2. Sammy was seeing red

Sammy was seeing red.

He'd always though that was a cliché, and he never used clichés, but he was having trouble seeing through the red mist in front of his eyes. Or it could be the tears that, despite his best efforts, kept filling them.

Sammy was a geek. Dean loved activity; Sammy could sit curled up with his nose in a book for hours. For Dean's sake, though, he tried not to reveal his geekdom. Geeks got bullied, and anyone who bullied Sammy found themselves facing the wrath of Dean. The trouble was, Dean would face off against _anyone_ who bullied Sammy. If the bullies were smaller than him, Dean, trying not to be a bully himself, would usually just throw them over his shoulder and deposit them somewhere embarrassing, like the girls' locker room or under the boys' showers fully clothed. If the bullies were bigger than him, though, or there were lots of them, Dean waded in, fists firing. He always made it painful enough that no one attacked Sammy again, but he often ended up bruised and battered himself.

So, for Dean's sake, Sammy tried to make himself a small target. At a new school he would manage to fly below the radar for a week or so, but then he'd feel sorry for a teacher and answer a question in class, or his curiosity would get the better of him and he'd ask one. Even if he managed to stay quiet, handing in his first paper or sitting his first test would get him discovered. Then there was the fact that he was always a year or so younger than his classmates, having skipped a couple of years early on. To the teachers, he was Sammy, Boy Genius. To his classmates, he was Geek Boy, ripe to be picked on.

This time it had been worse. At his last school his English teacher had introduced him to poetry, beginning with Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and then, when Sammy had lapped them up and looked for more, moving back to Shakespeare and the English Romantics. No matter how quiet Sammy had kept in class, nothing was going to save him once he'd been caught at lunchtime reading Shelley. His fate in this school was sealed.

Not that life as a geek was uniformly bleak. His fellow geeks, nerds and outcasts included sweet, red-headed Willow; Owen, who loved Emily Dickinson as much as Sammy did; lanky, kindly Jesse, who reminded Sammy of a friendly puppy; and Xander, whose obvious use of humour to deflect pain was giving Sammy whole new insights into his big brother. None of them seemed to mind that Sammy was a couple of years younger than them, or that he hadn't shared their years of back story. He was accepted. But even having companions at the bottom of the pecking order still left Sammy at the bottom of the pecking order - right next to Jonathan Levenson. Ignored at best. Taunted at worst.

At least, so it had seemed, until one amazing day. Walking over a playing field, reciting Wordsworth's 'Surprised by joy' to himself (Sammy's taste in poetry was for the melancholy) he had found a miskicked soccer ball at his feet. Without thinking, he had kicked it back, sending it soaring over the head of the astonished goalie to nestle sweetly in the corner of the net.

"Do that again."

Sammy looked up, surprised. The boy yelling to him was Tor Hauer, in his class but a couple of years older than him, a lot bigger, and someone who had hitherto treated Sammy as though he was invisible.

"What?"

"Do it again. See if you can do it when Mashad's ready for you."

"Okay," said Sammy, putting his bag down and jogging forward to receive the ball. He looked at the goal, lined his kick up – and did it again, this time sending the ball into the opposite corner.

"Whoa, Geek Boy can score," Tor sounded astonished, which wasn't a real surprise. Sammy had astonished himself. Maybe all that training his Dad made him and Dean do was worth it. His body did seem to be happy to do whatever he wanted it to; even with all five boys against him Sammy was able to steer the ball around them and score. He'd played with them for an hour or so, until Dean, grumbling because Sammy had said he'd be at the library, had come to find him and escort him home.

Suddenly, life at school had got better. He was still Geek Boy, but his geekdom was forgiven. The Razorbacks sucked at almost every sport played - though the cheerleaders were good. Anyone who could add strength to any team was welcomed with open arms – as Coach Spacey wanted to welcome Sammy.

Until he'd raised the issue with his Dad. Playing soccer wasn't just about lunchtimes at school; there were after school practices and weekend games. And his Dad wanted him and Dean to learn bow hunting. He didn't care that Sammy was finally finding his own place at school, that people had stopped picking on him, that _all_ his classmates were actually willing to talk to him, rather than just his fellow nerds. As far as Sammy could tell, John just didn't care about Sammy, full stop.

Now he stomped along the backstreets, not noticing that it was getting dark, kicking a stray can that he'd found in a gutter, blinking back tears of anger. It was probably because of those tears, that red mist, that he lost himself, suddenly looking up to find himself in a alley he didn't recognise in the so-called 'bad part' of town. (Not that there was a lot of town; not that bad things didn't happen all over it.) And there, in front of him, was what had jerked him back to reality, a woman, screaming, crying, being held by a _thing _that was dragging her back down the alley towards where Sammy was standing frozen.

The thing had its back to Sammy, so he couldn't tell what it was. It was corporeal, obviously, because it had the woman round the neck. And it was strong. But maybe it was just a mugger, a person who could be scared off by the mere presence of a witness, even if the witness was only a thirteen-year old boy. Sammy had to hope so; because he didn't have any weapons with him and his father and brother were nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly he was wishing desperately that either or both the other members of his screwed-up family were in the alley with him. But they weren't, and he'd have to do his best without them. He was a Winchester, after all, even if an under-sized one, and he wasn't going to ignore someone in trouble.

The thing had stopped moving, although the woman was still struggling and crying. It was lowering its head towards the woman' neck, almost as if it wanted to kiss her, which Sammy would have found gross even if the action had appeared consensual. The thing seemed to be so focussed on its prey that it didn't notice Sammy run up behind it and kick it, hard, in the back of one knee.

It wasn't the most carefully-thought-out move, but it seemed to work. The thing stumbled to one knee, dropping the woman, who fell forward onto all fours.

"Run!" Sammy screamed. "Get help!" As the thing turned to face its attacker, the woman gathered herself up and sprinted down the alley. So far, so good. Sammy had saved the girl. The only question was: who was going to save him?


	3. Blood runs cold heart in mouth

Dean had begun his search for Sammy concerned. Concern had soon turned to worry; now, after almost an hour of fruitless searching through the high school grounds, parks, library, worry had become terror. Where the hell was Sammy? It seemed just Dean's luck that as he headed towards the Bronze, really scraping the bottom of the barrel on places that Sammy might have stormed to, that a woman stumbled out of an alley screaming for help. Sammy-searching was going to have to be put on hold while he dealt with the immediate crisis. Then he realised that the woman was yelling something about a kid in trouble, and Dean's big-brother-spider-sense finally kicked in.

The alley was dark, but even through the shadows Sammy could see that the thing's face was vaguely demonic. And it didn't seem to be scared off by his presence; not that Sammy blamed it for that. He wouldn't have been scared off by him either. Instead of leaving, it was approaching him slowly, stalking. Sammy backed away until he was flat against a wall, eyes darting around, looking desperately for a weapon, anything.

"I know it's not polite to play with one's food."

The voice was deep, gravelly, earthy. Sammy was learning a lot about clichés tonight – it appeared that it really _was_ possible for blood to run cold. He felt as though he'd been thrown into freezing water as his veins and arteries turned to ice inside him. It was hard to breathe and he was shaking.

"But you're too small to make a decent meal, so playing with you might be the only way to have any fun."

And the thing grabbed his arm and threw him against the opposite wall. The last thing Sammy was aware of before he hit the bricks was that without thought or volition he was screaming for the one person he trusted to save him. Then his body connected with the wall and, another cliché, the world went dark.

"DEAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Dean had arrived in the alley in time to see his little brother's unexpected flying lesson. Whatever had thrown Sammy was advancing on him as Dean pulled out his gun and ran to throw himself between the thing and his brother.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!"

He was trying to channel his father, trying to sound like John Winchester – ice, granite, steel. Trying not to let this _thing_ see the waves of terror washing through him at the sight of his little brother crumpled at the bottom of a wall. He wasn't sure that it was working. He wasn't John Winchester, he was Dean, big brother extraordinaire, Sammy's protector, currently freaking out at the thought that he might have failed at the only task of any importance in his life – protecting his family. This was his night for discovering the truth of clichés; his heart reallywas in his mouth. Maybe he should let all those English teachers know that some things were clichés for a _reason_.

"That's not going to hurt me."

The thing was grinning, pointing to the gun in Dean's hand. "Guns don't have much effect on me. Certainly can't kill me."

"No?" Dean raised an eyebrow. "Bet it'll hurt like hell though."

It was an almost universal rule. If something was corporeal sticking a bullet in it would hurt it. Of course, sometimes putting a bullet in a thing just hurt it enough to piss it off; they'd learnt that the hard way with a wendigo. So Dean was gambling that this was one of those things that would find a bullet hole too painful to risk, rather than just annoying it into further attack. Until he could be sure, he wasn't going to fire. But he sure as hell wasn't going to let this thing get Sammy, whatever happened.

For a moment there was silence. Then the thing shrugged, "Better hunting elsewhere anyway," and suddenly it had leapt ten feet straight up the wall and onto the roof, out of the alley. The hunter in Dean watched with a moment's regret, but the big brother in him was stronger and he found himself on his knees beside Sammy before he was aware he'd begun to move.

"Sammy? Sammy? Dude, are you alright?" Dean shook Sammy's shoulder, gently at first, then a little harder. "Come on dude, wake up."

For one long moment, long enough for Dean to really begin to panic, nothing happened. Then Sammy stirred. Hazel eyes opened, looked dazedly up into green.

"Dean?"

"Yeah, Sammy, I'm here."

Sammy closed his eyes for a second, and then opened them again, looking up at Dean with such confidence that Dean was glad he was already down, because otherwise the look of absolute trust in his baby brother's enormous eyes would have brought him to his knees. It struck Dean like a blow to the chest, a blow that somehow, paradoxically, began healing his broken heart, that Sammy had never had the slightest doubt that Dean would find him. Sammy had been in trouble, he'd called for Dean, and Dean had been there. And Sammy had _expected_ that, because that was what his big brother always did. Dean breathed a quick prayer to Pastor Jim's God, with whom he was in intermittent communication, that he never let Sammy down, never gave Sammy reason to doubt that his big brother would always have his back. Then he turned to more immediate issues.

"How're you feeling, dude? Anything broken?"

Sammy started squirming a bit, trying to move all four limbs at once, despite Dean's attempt to still him.

"Nah. Everything's moving okay. My head hurts a bit, though."

"Excuse me."

Dean turned to see the woman who'd run screaming at him earlier. Now that he had time to look at her he could see that she was pretty hot, if old, mid-to-late twenties at least. Her knees were bleeding and she was holding her hands out in front of her as though they hurt, but she was smiling.

"My car's half a block away. You two walk me there and I'll give you a lift wherever you need to go."

"Sounds like a deal," said Dean, standing up and helping Sammy to rise. "We're staying at the Motel."

The woman's name was Aimee, and she was a lawyer. And she really was hot, although the car she led them to was a complete chick-mobile. Sadly, it appeared her hotness was off-limits to Dean, even without the ten years she had on him. He'd been telling her, again trying to channel his father, that she shouldn't be wandering the streets of this town alone after dark.

'I know, I know. But I'd had a fight with my girlfriend and I stormed off. And if you two hadn't shown up I'd have died and the last thing I would ever have said to her was that she was a control freak. Once I tell her about this she's never going to let me leave the house. And if she does, I'm always going to have to make sure that the last thing I say to her every single time I leave is 'I love you', just in case, damn it,"

Dean's brain was split in two. Half of it was freaking at the image her words had conjured. If Sammy had been hurt Dean would have had to live the rest of his life with the memory that the last thing his brother had ever said to him was that he hated his family. That was it; he was never letting Sammy storm off alone again. He once more contacted Pastor Jim's God, who was undoubtedly surprised at finding Godself back on Dean Winchester's Christmas card list, quickly thanking him that Sammy's freak-out had ended okay.

The other half of Dean's mind was hoping that Sammy hadn't picked up on the telltale word 'girlfriend' and the feminine pronouns. He'd explained sex to Sammy years ago, but that had been sex of the male-female variety and he didn't feel up to explaining male-male or female-female sex to his thirteen-year-old brother. That was definitely a conversation for when Sammy was fifteen. Maybe even sixteen, if he could delay it until then.

The trip back to the motel was short. Sammy and Dean shared the back seat, Dean unwilling to let Sammy out of touch and Sammy happy to indulge him. Sammy's bruises were beginning to stiffen, and Dean needed to help him out of the car when they reached the motel. Aimee got out too, and looked down at Sammy with a smile.

"What's your name?"

"Sammy Winchester."

"Well, Sammy Winchester, _you_ are my hero," and she bent down and kissed Sammy on the cheek. Sammy blushed, a wave of colour sweeping up his neck, and Aimee smiled again. Then she handed Dean a card. "Look, you guys ever need a lawyer, give me a call."

"Thanks," said Dean, surprised and pleased. A lawyer who owed them one. Not a bad thing to have.

"Take care of him," Aimee said, looking back at Sammy. "That's one special kid."

'I know," said Dean, not even caring that Sammy could hear him, although he would deny it if Sammy called him on it later. Then Aimee was back in her car and gone, undoubtedly heading home to apologise to that girlfriend of hers. Dean turned to Sammy and prepared to help him the five metres to the door.

"Hey, better watch out," he teased, "I think she wanted a piece of Sammy cake."

"Deeeeaaaannnn," Sammy sighed, rolling his eyes. 'She has a _girlfriend! _She's a _lesbian_!" And before Dean had time to recover from _that_ shock, Sammy added another one. "Although maybe she's bisexual. Like Shakespeare."

That was it. Sammy _definitely_ read too many books.


	4. Conclusion

They hadn't made it all the way through the doorway, and John was only beginning to rise from the table where he'd been checking his weapons, before Sammy started talking.

"I'm okay, Dad. Dean saved me."

Dean felt the last cracks in his heart heal.

Sammy might claim to believe that his father didn't care about him. But his first impulse on seeing that same, supposedly uncaring, father was to soothe and reassure him. No matter how much he might protest, Sammy _knew_ that John would first be terrified that his younger son was hurt, and then angry that his elder son hadn't prevented it.

Together, John and Dean helped Sammy into the bathroom, where John checked him over for injuries.

"Well, I don't think you've broken anything," John said finally, having scrutinised every inch of his younger son. "But you're going to be sore for a while. Why not soak in the tub?"

Sammy shot a quick look at Dean, who nodded and bent to turn on the taps.

"Hop in, kiddo. I'll order us some pizza."

"Okay," Sammy said, a little subdued. The contrast between his fiery exit and his return to his father's concern was freaking him out a little; he was still waiting for John to yell. Dean smiled reassuringly at him as he followed their father out of the bathroom. There would be paternal yelling at some point, probably about the stupidity of wandering around a strange town after dark without weapons, but not until after John was sure that Sammy was fully recovered and not until after he'd killed the son of a bitch that had _dared_ to touch his youngest.

"What was it?" John asked, looking over the array of weapons laid neatly out on the table.

"Not sure," Dean replied. "Corporeal, strong, threw Sammy across an alley like he weighed nothing. Jumped ten metres vertical straight up a wall to get away."

"Okay," said John, making a selection and tucking various weapons into various pockets and holsters. "Stay here. Look after your brother."

Normally Dean would have argued, demanded that he come too, asserted that at thirteen Sammy could look after himself in a locked morel room. In his constant balancing act between taking care of Sammy and watching out for his father, Dean tried to be as close as possible to whichever of them seemed at that moment to need him more. Since Sammy had turned twelve, able to be trusted not to burn himself when making dinner or electrocute himself trying to hook up the VCR or poison himself with cleaning products or medication or do any of the other hundred and one stupid things that children left alone at home seemed able to do, that had meant John, - at least on those occasions when John was going up against something that could kill him.

But having so recently seen his brother lying crumpled and still in an alley, Dean wasn't letting Sammy further away from him than the distance between the living and the bath rooms, and even that distance was starting to freak him out a little. So now he just nodded and watched his father walk alone into the night.

His father and his brother were the only things of importance in his world, the only items on the mental list he carried around in his head labelled 'Dean's Life'. Which one of them took priority over the other depended on circumstance, and tonight Sammy outranked John.

Later that evening, when the boys were curled up on the couch, eating pizza and enjoying, without making an issue of it, their proximity and the casual touches that reassured them both that they were alive and they were together, Sammy had a thought.

"Hey, Dean …"

"Yeah, Sammy?"

"That thing. It was going for that woman's neck. Like it wanted to bite her. You don't think it was a vampire, do you?"

Don't be silly, Sammy," Dean said lazily, warm inside with food and Sammy's closeness. "There's no such thing as vampires."


End file.
